The peak of phase two of our training program was reached last Sunday. When I studied the training plan on Sunday 23^rd May I saw the weeks schedule ahead. The total it had planned for us was 111 miles. Like, hello!!!

PICTURED: Peter Canavan with Kerry Boyd from Autism NI at Baronscourt Estate Co Tyrone - Peter is running in the Tyrone leg of the event

There was nothing to be done but formulate a plan to reach this goal. We were coming off an ‘easy’ week so this could either be deemed helpful as it meant we were well rested or challenging because we had dropped our three figure weekly mileage considerably for the week before, perhaps getting complacent in the process.

Monday needed focus because if we were to achieve this massive volume we would need to run a high mileage for seven consecutive days. Monday to Friday saw us run a total of 62 miles. This had been planned to leave two high volume consecutive runs for Saturday and Sunday last. We decided to split it into a 32 mile and a 17 mile run.

Both Ken and I had a late night on Friday as we were attending a nutrition talk in Roscommon, thus we only started our run shortly after 9am on Saturday.  At the beginning we both felt very strong and ran, what we felt, was a very comfortable 8 min 20 to 8 min 30 mile pace. This would be very comfortable had our distance for the day only been 15 or 18 miles, however our target was 32 miles, so by mile 20 we were really feeling it. At this point we had to take a short 5 minute break and cool the lower leg muscles in the even cooler Royal Canal somewhere  between Kinnegad and Enfield. This worked a treat and soon we were off for the final 12 miles of this 5 hour run. A lesson well and truly learned.

Sunday saw us have a beautiful run in the Belvedere Estate just outside Mullingar . This is our favourite training ground. Indeed Ken lives just a matter of metres from this route. By the end of the day our target had been reached literally to the mile. 111 miles run on the legs over seven days – what a feeling?!

And now… less than 5 weeks to the start line of our 32 marathon challenge.

Gerry Duffy

Could you run over 800 miles in a month and a day? That’s the ambitious challenge facing long distance runners Gerry Duffy and Ken Whitelaw in July and August as they aim to run 32 marathons in 32 consecutive days across the 32 counties of Ireland to raise money for autism charities Autism NI and Irish Autism Action. Each week, we will add a new blog entry.